The Society for Ethnobotany

Fostering research and education on the past, present, and future uses of plants by people.

SEB 2017 Business Meeting Minutes

SEB 2017 Business Meeting minutes

June 8, 2017

Secretary: Nanci Ross

  1. Approval of minutes from 2016 meeting

    1. Ran into a problem here because new Secretary (N. Ross) did not have the minutes from the previous year’s meeting. Bob Voeks cited a precedent that this has happened before and we could vote to look for the minutes at a later date and simply move on with the rest of the current meeting. S. Brosi seconded the idea. Ross agreed to look for the minutes and send them out to the society for approval when/if they were discovered.

      1. UPDATE: No minutes from the 2016 meeting were found. We do have the agenda from the 2016 business meeting. So, I am including that here.

        1. For the record, the 2016 President’s award was given to Annie Virnig and John de la Parra.

        2. Also, extensive discussion of whether we should change the name of the society was had in 2016, but no consensus was reached. The President Elect (Steve Casper) agreed to pursue a survey of the society members about whether a name change is desired in general.

  2. Treasurers report

    1. Wendy Applequist gave her report on the financials of SEB. Several members had specific, detailed questions that required careful explanation of the spreadsheet data provided by the Treasurer.

      1. UPDATE: If an SEB member would like to discuss the financials in detail, please contact Wendy Applequist directly. If you would simply like to see the current operating expenses and budget as well as the text of the treasurer’s report, you can contact the secretary, Nanci Ross (nanci.ross@drake.edu).

  3. Executive report

    1. 2017 Election results

      1. President-elect: Sunshine Brosi

      2. Treasurer: Wendy Applequist

      3. New Council Members: Ulysses Albuquerque and Narel Paniagua

      4. Student Representative: Susanne Masters

    2. Society poll regarding a name change

      1. Postponed while analysis of the previous extensive survey by Rick Stepp et al. regarding SEB member perceptions on name changes, etc., is conducted

  4. Business office report

    1. New contract with NYBG! (more on this with Editor’s report)

    2. Membership is up due to high attendance at the 2017 meeting

    3. William Dahl is retiring; Heather Cacanidin is taking over as coordinator with SEB

  5. Editors Report

    1. New NYBG contract

      1. “The highlight of the agreement is that rather than a fixed sum payment to SEB for producing the journal Economic Botany, for now and into the immediate future the royalties from Springer will be divided 70% to the SEB and 30% to NYBG.” (quote from the report by Bob Voeks)

      2. “One of the provisions in the Publishing Agreement between SEB and NYBG is an increase in annual page allotment from 416 to 496 pages. The increased allotment is meant to allow Economic Botany to produce one Special Issue per year… beginning in 2018.” (quote from the report by Bob Voeks

        1. Ideas for special issues and/or guest Editors should be sent to the EIC (Bob Voeks)

  6. Future meetings: presentations for 2018 and 2019 conferences were given.

    1. 2018 Conference: Madison, Wisconsin USA

      1. Presented by Alex McAlvay

    2. 2019 Conference: Cincinnati, Ohio USA (host David Lentz was not at the 2017 meeting)

    3. Proposal for 2020 conference in Jamaica presented by Dr. David Pickering, University of the West Indies

      1. Approved unanimously!

    4. NOTE A discussion came up about society members being unaware of proposals for future meeting sites. Apparently, in the past, future locations were voted on by the full membership. In 2011, however, the procedure was changed to allow the council to vote on the future locations rather than having the membership vote on it to prevent delay in determining future locations (we had a few years where there was nothing until the last minute). Despite this, the council agreed to try to post info on new proposals ASAP to the whole society to keep everyone in the loop. Contact the Secretary for any questions.

  7. Recognition of Service was given for outgoing council members.

  8. President’s Award

    1. As his last official act as President, Steve Casper granted the President’s Award to Ana Maria Carvalho (Instituto Politécnico de Bragança, Bragança) for her hard work in putting together such a successful meeting in 2017. Congratulations, Ana!!

  9. Transfer of the gavel: 2017-2018 SEB President is Gayle Fritz, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA

  10. Meeting adjourned